Tales from The Trenches Archive

The Workbug

I was an intern at an Emergency Room when this happened; someone had collapsed and his friends/coworkers had brought him in. He came in with a bad infection, and the attending doctor recommended that he take it easy and tried to get him to stay at the hospital. It turned out that the patient was a QA tester for a video game company, though he didn’t write which one, only that he worked in QA. His coworkers had left almost immediately after bringing him in, and he refused to be hospitalized because he was sure he’d be fired if he was. We were forced to allow him to leave AMA.

He was back the next week, except this time he had to be hospitalized because his respiratory bug had progressed into full-on pneumonia. He was rather distraught, and the attending told him that he was confident the company wouldn’t be so heartless that they’d fire someone for taking sick leave.